


late nights, moonlight

by orphan_account



Category: EXO (Band), Miss A
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 18:16:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17330036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Every time Jia lies next to Yixing, she watches, for a while. She does it when he has fallen asleep, when the shadows come in and moonlight ceases to fall on his face. Listening to Yixing’s soft inhales and exhales, she stares, unseeing, into the night.yixing/jia drabble collection





	1. the fear of falling apart

**Author's Note:**

> x-posting from livejournal

Yixing is beautiful. Jia tells him so, over and over, but the words haven’t yet lost their meaning.

He laughs in response this morning, a quiet smile on his face when he hands over some tea. His face is older now, premature laugh lines around the sides of his eyes, but in them Jia still sees the lost boy from Changsha.

(she likes to think, more than a thousand miles away from China, they’ve made their own home.)

 

Their first kiss is alcohol-fueled and melancholy, more bitter than sweet. Jia pushes him away after a couple of seconds and reminds herself: don’t take advantage, don’t get hurt. As she walks him to her apartment, his babble is constant and mostly weepy; Yixing’s a cute drunk.

“But don’t you miss them?” he asks when Jia tucks him into her bed.

“Yeah,” she whispers, after Yixing’s glassy eyes shut closed. More than you would ever know, she thinks. She stands there, observing him for a moment. Even inebriated, he is appealing.

(jia knows that he will forget this, but she always remembers.)

 

Yixing makes his way into her life, slowly and surely. Jia starts setting the table with two plates instead of one; there’s a drawer now with his things.

She tries to convinces herself that they are completely platonic, tries to remind herself that she doesn’t want her heart broken again.

(but the way yixing looks at her sometimes -- searching and pleading and a little desperate -- even jia cannot put a spin on.)

 

There’s an ugly voice in her head that says he’s going to leave. That Jia will be heartbroken when Yixing goes, with only herself to blame.

(again.)

 

“Why are you so afraid?” Yixing asks, his head on Jia’s shoulder. His hand rests on Jia’s thigh, inching up slowly. His lips curve into her neck, a question.

“I don’t know,” she lies. I love you. I’m afraid of loving you.

“Really?” he says, looking up at her curiously. His hand stills, then finally lifts up to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. He’s afraid too, Jia thinks. Alight in his eyes is the realization of burgeoning love, of new feelings and old hopes.

(neither of them voice their thoughts that night, but jia knows, then, that something has changed. it was like taking a wrong turn and somehow losing all thoughts of the preset destination. it was like being stranded in the unknown, both of them together, with no one to rely on but each other.)

 

Yixing is the one who says it first, with only the night sky as their witness. Jia is staring at his face in the moonlight, the night rendering him a silvery-grey. He whispers, soft enough to be mistaken for breathing.

“I love you,” he says, and she is not afraid. Something unknown and powerful rushes through her veins, and--

“I love you,” she says, whispering right back.

(jia stays awake for a while after that, eyes greedily roaming yixing’s face, wondering at her happiness)

 

Their first date is casual and giddy, both of them walking around Seoul at four am. Jia protests at the face masks (‘it’s been three years since Exo has disbanded, you can’t be that popular”) and laughs at all of Yixing’s jokes. The dim yellow street lights make it hard to see his face, but his laughter is clear under the mask and brighter than any light bulb.

The two of them end up at a 24-hour convenience store, flushed and happy. The sleepy teen at the register pays them little attention as they take off their masks and talk into the night, twin cups of ramen between them.

As the sun rises in a vermillion haze, they walk home. Seoul is just beginning to wake up: cars honking, early morning runners about, and in the middle of it all, Yixing and Jia.

Sleepily, they look up at the sky in wonder.

“Wow,” Yixing says.

(and it feels like the beginning of something more.)

 

“Jia?” It’s late, but the two of them are still awake in bed.

“Yeah?” she stares up at the darkness, eyes wide open, seeing nothing.

Yixing finds her hand, warm and sure, and doesn’t say anything. Jia doesn’t need words to tell her what she already knows.

( _i love you too,_ she thinks, and hopes that he knows.)


	2. new dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> future fic. jia visits yixing in beijing.

7/10 -- I told Fei that I was going to Beijing in a couple days -- the first time in a couple decades -- and she didn’t say anything. Just looked at me, with those probing, knowing eyes of hers, and her silence was more than words could ever communicate. 

 

Finally, she asked me if I was going to see Yixing. I said I didn’t know.  _ You still love him, _ Fei was thinking.  _ After all of these years. _ I know that she only withheld those words for the small scraps of pride that I have left.

  
  
  


7/14 -- Yixing picked me up from the airport quickly. We drove through the high rise apartments, through the porridge-grey fuzz of fog around us, through the early evening traffic.  _ It’s all of the commuters, _ he said.  _ I missed you, _ he said. Why did these words feel so empty and hollow, the car ride so eerily quiet? It was like growing up and realizing that that your favorite movie wasn’t that good anymore; it was like returning to old memories and realizing that nostalgia had rewritten them all, flushing out all of the bad; it was disappointment and foolishness combined in the worst sort of way. 

 

I knew that things had changed, and I prepared myself for it -- for the laughter lines around Yixing’s eyes, for the sprinkling of grey in his hair, for the way his face finally seemed to match his eyes, wise beyond their years -- but still. It was difficult. It  _ is _ difficult. 

  
  
  


7/15 -- He asked me if there was anywhere I wanted to go, any family to visit. I told him that anyone I used to care about here was long dead to me. What I didn’t say: that I had been so homesick I knew I couldn’t go back to Korea if I visited home, that I had spent so long missing the people from my past life that I no longer had anything to miss anymore (except him, always him). Yixing looked so scared then, in that intimate moment. So vulnerable and young. I wonder what he was afraid of.

  
  
  


7/17 -- I pushed Yixing away after he kissed me, and he laughed. Just laughed -- a sad, sweet sound --  and said that he wasn’t the same lost little boy that I used to know. He said that I had changed too, a revelation I half-knew and had half-forgotten. I let him kiss me, the next time. 

 

(There was still something off about it, something not quite like it used to be, but I realize it now -- it is change, through and through.)

  
  
  


7/18 -- We went out for groceries and I could feel the second glances of strangers that passed us by, the seemingly invisible yet obvious air of a foreigner. Why can’t you accept me? I wanted to ask them. If Seoul wasn’t home and Beijing wasn’t and Yixing wasn’t home, then what was? It is so frightening, that uncertainty.

  
  
  


7/20 -- I woke up with the sunrise, a soft orange glow seeping through the horizon. Yixing was already awake, staring up at the ceiling. Still an insomniac, after everything. Why Beijing, I asked him. Why not his hometown? 

 

He looked out the window, tired and awake, for a long time. He said, I wanted a new beginning. The sky was still orange, the color of so many bridges: between night and day, between yellow and red, between an old past and a new dawn. And I believed in it all -- in him -- for that sacred second.


	3. promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> jia isn't the first person who has left yixing for dreams of something else, but she hopes that she's the last.

"i heard about the news." yixing's voice through the telephone is quiet, restrained; beneath that jia can hear the accusatory  _ why didn't you tell me? _ in his voice.

 

"yeah." jia swallows dryly, at a loss for what to say. she hates herself for it, because she knows now that she isn't better than the rest of them, no matter what she had promised both of them so long ago. jia isn't the first person who has left yixing for dreams of something else, but she hopes that she's the last.

 

"so where are you heading?" he asks. "beijing, or...?"

 

she exhales and laughs shakily. "god, i don't know." and when has she ever? but the urge to leave seoul is an irresistible itch, impossible to ignore. "anywhere but here."

 

"anywhere but here," yixing echoes, voice hollow. then: "i'll miss you."

 

jia listens to the sound of his breathing for a few moments, wonders what to say to lessen the pain and ease the burden. she imagines him on the other end of the line, tired and washed out yet still so quietly beautiful -- and she is speechless.

 

"i'll visit you when i go to china," he says, finally. an empty promise. "you can just call me." then yixing hangs up, and jia is left listening to nothing, a thousand unsaid thoughts swirling around her head that she is unable to voice.


End file.
